The Statue of Liberty stands for American hopes and dreams, an emblem of both New York City and the American gateway. That's precisely why so many film directors and video game creators love to smash Lady Liberty to bits. But who do you think did the best job of damaging or destroying the Statue of Liberty?

We've seen the Statue of Liberty kick the bucket in a litany of ways, but never like this. Just for kicks, Vincent Ullmann has created this short animation of the Statue disintegrating like it was made of moldy yogurt. The French never told us about the skeleton underneath, we suppose.

In science fiction filmdom, the destruction of the Statue of Liberty is merely a sign that the carnage is chugging along at a steady tack. But reality provides some equally strange views of Lady Liberty, particularly when she was under construction in Paris during the mid-1880s. Here are some curious photographs of…

We're used to seeing the Statue of Liberty get trashed in speculative fiction, but this strange cartoon from Harper's Weekly on May 28, 1887 turned Lady Liberty into a dystopian, Castle Greyskull-style train station.